Yahoo Inc. has struck a deal with Mozilla Corp to replace Google Inc as the default search engine on the Firefox Web browser in the United States on mobile and desktop.
The deal between the two companies will start in December and will last for five years, Yahoo said. Since 2004, Google has been paying Mozilla a ton of money each year estimated at $100 million for the privilege of being the default search engine used in the Firefox browser. So basically, a 10-year partnership that paid most of Mozilla's bills is coming to an end.
Mozilla and Yahoo have signed a five-year deal. The Mozilla deal means that users of the Firefox browser in the U.S. will automatically be routed to search results on Yahoo's website when they type a query into the small box that appears at the top of the browser.Yahoo will begin showing a prettier, brighter page of search results to Firefox users, with all Yahoo users getting a similar page early next year.
It must be noted that the switch to Yahoo will only affect the US version of Firefox as Mozilla will rely on other search engines for different countries, such as Yandex for Russia and Baidu as default in China.